Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(11)

After every headset session, Jack and Janet directed an intense debriefing. Upon discovering the difficulty Heather had encountered in mentally ejecting an uncooperative headset wearer, namely Mark, from her mind, Jack locked in on the problem. He devised a series of trials that became mental wrestling matches. One by one they would each probe each other’s mental defenses, under strict instructions that once they had penetrated another’s barriers, they were to disengage and debrief.

Over the weeks, as Mark, Jen, and Heather grew stronger, it became harder and harder to bypass their opponents’ mental blocks. But when a block failed, those brief glimpses into each other’s souls were both traumatic and thrilling.

Now, settled into the alien couch on the Bandolier Ship’s command deck, Heather recognized Jack’s deeper purpose. All their mental wrestling practice had been designed to ready them for this moment. Only this time their opponent wouldn’t be a living, breathing person.

Mark? Jen?

Right here. Mark’s mind softly touched hers.

Me too, Jen intoned. Following your lead.

Heather centered, focusing her thoughts on the Bandolier Ship, its crew, and the headbands, pulling forth the visions that lurked just beneath her mind’s calm, dark surface. And as those visions intensified, she felt herself sucked across the boundary into a different alien reality.





Mark felt the alien couch enfold his virtual body as Heather’s visions whispered at the corner of his awareness. Lowering all barriers, he allowed the visions in, succumbing to the raw power of Heather’s mind.

In rapid succession, she played back every time they had been on the Bandolier Ship, every time they had been connected to the headsets. Mark felt Jennifer join the effort as Heather absorbed his sister’s solo visits to the Bandolier starship.

Again and again the sequence replayed itself, and each time the emphasis of the vision shifted, replaying the scenes at different speeds and from different perspectives. Suddenly the focus narrowed and intensified.

Gabriel! The name rang their joint minds like the tolling of a distant bell. One of three biblical archangels, regarded as the angel of mercy by most Christians, as the angel of judgment in the Jewish tradition. It was said the sounding of Gabriel’s horn would signal the end of days.

The Rag Man had been the first to find the Bandolier Ship, the first to wear the fourth headset. He had seen the alien visions, his sick mind interpreting his assigned role as that of the new Gabriel, the one destined to sound the horn to end all things.

And the Rag Man had watched as Mark, Jennifer, and Heather had found the cave and the alien craft. The probabilities clicked into place in Heather’s mind. He had known they had worn the other three headsets. The Rag Man’s access to the starship had been more extensive than their own. The ship had used the Rag Man to evaluate them, seeking to assess their fitness to fulfill the roles represented by the other three headsets, gradually granting them more access as they were deemed worthy.

The shock of that realization stunned Mark. Their Bandolier Ship had granted the Rag Man full access to its data banks, something it continued to deny them. And in the end, the Rag Man had decided that Heather, like Jack’s partner hanging on the meat hook in the Rag Man’s cave, was only worthy of death. What kind of artificial intelligence could be complicit in such judgments?

At the edge of Mark’s consciousness, a subtle change drew his attention. Withdrawing slowly from his link with Heather and Jennifer, Mark shifted his focus toward the thing that had distracted him. The déjà vu feeling reminded him of when he had first detected the pinhole anomaly in his bedroom, the feeling of being watched. But this was different. The cold shiver that crawled slowly up his spine told Mark they had now attracted the attention of something far more dangerous.





The Bandolier Ship filled the back end of the cave, the soft magenta glow so evenly distributed it seemed to emanate from the very air. Against that backdrop, the tables of computers, fluorescent lamps, and monitors made a garish contrast.

“It’s happening!” Yin Tao’s loud voice startled Dr. Joann Drake so that she sloshed her coffee.

“Ow! Shit!” She’d burned her hand. But Joann’s annoyance faded as she glanced over the graduate student’s shoulder at the instrument readings spiking across the bank of flat-panel displays.

Spinning on her heel, Dr. Drake grabbed her iPhone from its docking station, her finger speed-dialing Dr. Hanz Jorgen as she raised the phone to her ear.

“Yes, Joann?”

“We’ve got another event.”

“Now?”

“Just started.” Joann glanced at the nearest monitor. “Thirty seconds ago.”

“On my way.”

The line went dead, and Joann returned her phone to the charging station.

As badly as she wanted to walk over and ascend the ladder into the ship, Joann knew that Hanz expected her to wait for him, the act a slight deferential nod to the Rho Project’s senior scientist. She supposed that when she had won two Nobel Prizes she’d expect that same level of respect from her staff.

Besides, despite Dr. Jorgen’s expansive waistline, he could really move when he wanted to, often acquiring so much momentum on his descent of the steps carved into the canyon’s steep wall that Joann regarded his ability to stop at the bottom a violation of Newton’s first law. On cue, Dr. Jorgen passed through the Bandolier Ship’s camouflaging holograph at the cave entrance, his quick stride carrying him directly toward Joann, more specifically toward the bank of monitors behind her.